Broken Pedestrian Button Found Where Service Dog Advocate Was Killed On Christmas Day

Written By Suzi Rumohr

December 31, 2024

James Carter, 63, and his service dog, Austin, were killed on Christmas Day while attempting to cross University Drive on foot near Ruddell Street. 

According to Denton Record-Chronicle, witnesses said the driver had a green light, that Carter “came out of nowhere,” that he was “not on a sidewalk or in a crosswalk,” and that at least one witness was worried Carter “wouldn’t make it across in time because he walked with a limp.”

Reports of fatal crashes frequently describe the behaviors of people involved. In the case of crashes involving people walking, rolling or bicycling, little attention is given to why the person made that decision or whether external factors like road design or conditions may have contributed to the crash or the severity of it.

This piece takes a closer look at the context and road conditions surrounding the crash that killed Carter on Christmas Day.

James Carter, Advocate for Service Dogs

According to his website, Tails of Service, Carter lived with cerebral palsy. His service dog, Austin, helped him maintain independence by assisting with everyday tasks most people take for granted, including retrieving shoes, turning lights on and off, laundry, and opening and closing doors.

Carter’s love for his service dog led him to educate the public about all things relating to service dogs through blog posts and in-person presentations to a variety of local groups.

Carter was the third person killed in Denton in 2024 by a driver while traveling on foot or by wheelchair, according to data pulled from the TxDOT C.R.I.S. database. He was the second person with a physical disability to be killed while traveling without a motor vehicle. The first was Eladio Santiago, 79, who was traveling by wheelchair on McKinney Street near Mack Park when a driver struck and killed him.

Travel Patterns of U.S. Adults with Disabilities

According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, about 6% of Americans have a travel-limiting disability. These individuals are less likely to have access to employment and are more likely to live in low-income areas in zero-car households.

Among adults with disabilities ages 18 to 64, only 52% drove for most of their trips, compared to 67% to 78% of adults without disabilities. 

People with disabilities depend on rides from others, rideshare, paratransit, and public transit. In car-dependent locations where pedestrian infrastructure is non-existent, poor quality, or dangerous, many people with disabilities travel less or stay home.

Read: Why we can’t afford to ignore the needs of non-drivers with disabilities (Streetsblog USA, 08/30/2021)

Common Characteristics of Fatal Crashes

According to pedestrian safety data from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 7,388 people were killed while walking or rolling in 2021. The sites of these fatal crashes had many common road characteristics: 70% had five or more lanes to cross, 75% had speed limits of 30 mph or higher, and 62% had traffic volumes greater than 25,000 vehicles per day.

When two objects collide, the severity of damage is linked to the speed and weight of both objects. If two 180-pound people collide in a grocery store at 1 mph, injury to either person is unlikely. However, if one of those people is traveling 40 mph in an SUV weighing 3,500 pounds, there is at least a 77% chance that they kill or severely injure the other person.

Driver’s cone of vision and the damage they cause in a crash are related to travel speed. (Image source: U.S. Federal Highway Administration)

As speed or weight increases, the severity of damage increases when the driver collides with someone or something. Faster driving speeds also reduce a driver’s “cone of vision” and their ability to detect and safely react to something unexpected to avoid a collision. 

If someone makes a mistake or does something unexpected in a grocery store, causing two people to collide, injury risk is low. However, many roads are designed so that routine human error can easily result in death or life-changing injury. 

Road Conditions at University Drive and Ruddell Street

University Drive has many of the road design features associated with traffic fatalities: more than five lanes wide, speed limit above 30 mph, and daily traffic volume above 25,000 vehicles per day.

Much of University Drive has a speed limit of 45 mph. At this speed, an honest error by any road user is very likely to result in death or life-altering injury. Many drivers exceed the 45 mph limit, which further increases the difficulty of avoiding a collision and the likelihood of a fatal or serious injury when a crash occurs.

The high speeds, multiple lanes, and many conflict points along University Drive are a deadly combination of features that contribute to a predictable two fatalities and five life-altering injuries from crashes on average every year, according to data pulled from the TxDOT C.R.I.S. database. Since 2014, traffic crashes on University/380 in Denton city limits killed 14 people and seriously injured at least 59 people.

University/380 is owned and managed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Though TxDOT has made some improvements in recent years by adding sidewalks along portions of University Drive, many segments in the Denton city limits still lack basic pedestrian infrastructure like sidewalks or designated pedestrian crossings. 

Due to a lack of complete pedestrian infrastructure along University Drive and a design emphasis on speed over safety, traveling along University Drive is stressful for anyone traveling outside of a car. Crossing University Drive on foot or by wheelchair can be dangerous even at designated pedestrian crossings.

For people who only drive through an area, it’s tempting to judge the “dangerous” behaviors of someone walking, rolling, or biking in that area. Regardless of transportation mode, some people do engage in dangerous behaviors. However, for people trying to navigate a car-oriented area without a car, those “dangerous” behaviors are often a response to lack of pedestrian infrastructure, excessive travel times and delays to cross the street, and experiences of nearly being hit by drivers while crossing legally in a designated crosswalk with a Walk signal.

University Drive near Ruddell Street does not have a sidewalk on the north side of the roadway. Someone with a physical disability who is traveling between the Exxon convenience store on the north side and their apartment home on the south side may not be able to navigate the grass and curbs and may have to travel in the roadway until they can access a ramp.

Likewise, Ruddell Street, a city-owned roadway, does not have sidewalks on either side near University Drive. This lack of pedestrian infrastructure creates a more hostile and dangerous environment for people traveling outside of an automobile. For people with physical disabilities, this situation is even more dangerous if traveling in the roadway itself is the only way to access ramps or smooth surfaces.

In addition to the lack of infrastructure for people traveling outside of a car, U.S. traffic engineering standards historically time traffic lights and pedestrian crossing times to minimize delay for people in cars. U.S. standards for pedestrian crossing times assume that all pedestrians are young, able-bodied, and can walk at least 3.5 feet per second. 

In a 2022 study of young adults with cerebral palsy, researchers measured an average walking speed of 53 meters per minute among participants. Translated to traffic engineering measurements, this amounts to a walking speed of 2.9 feet per second, which is slower than the 3.5 ft/s walking speed suggested by the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).

Carter was 63 years old, so his walking speed could have been slower than the young adults in the 2022 study. His service dog also could have also impacted his walking speed.

A broken pedestrian button and street light

This section is written in first person by the author of this piece, Suzi Rumohr.

I visited the crash site on Sunday, December 29, to take a closer look at the conditions of the roadway. This is four days after Carter was killed.

According to a police spokesperson, witnesses say Carter was crossing University Drive on the east side of the intersection, headed towards the Exxon. Some witnesses say he was not in a crosswalk. One witness in the eastbound lanes of University said they couldn’t tell whether Carter was in a crosswalk but that he was in the general area of one.

Witness statements agree that Carter was struck in the center westbound lane of University Drive and that traffic on University had a green light at the time. No documented witness statements describe precisely how far east or west Carter was at the time of the collision. They state that he was not within a crosswalk but do not mention how far away he was from one. 

Given witness statements and the location of crash debris, a general area of collision can be estimated.

I asked a police spokesperson whether the pedestrian buttons were tested during the crash investigation on December 25. Because Carter was not in a crosswalk when he was struck, the pedestrian buttons were not tested.

During my site visit on December 29, I tested the pedestrian buttons to see how much crossing time they provided. If Carter could walk at least 2.9 feet per second, he needed about 43 seconds to cross all 124 feet of roadway. 

The Walk signal lasted about 34 seconds. This assumes a walking speed of about 3.6 feet per second, which is halfway between the 4 ft/s and 3 ft/s recommendations of standard traffic engineering and ADA recommendations, respectively. The time between the beginning of the Walk signal and University traffic getting a green light was about 45 seconds.

I took my initial measurements from the north side of the intersection. I then moved to the south side of the intersection to see if the timing was any different.

When I reached the pedestrian button on the southeast corner of the intersection, I pressed it to head north across University. Based on witness statements, this is the direction Carter was traveling.

I waited roughly 20 minutes, sat through multiple traffic cycles, and pressed the pedestrian button dozens of times. I never got a Walk signal to cross the road. 

As I stood there, I watched at least four people cross University without a Walk signal. They couldn’t trigger one. When asked, no one seemed to know how long the pedestrian button had been broken. One man walked up to tell me it was broken after he’d seen me standing there for about 10 minutes. “Me da miedo,” another man told me as he hesitated to cross University. “It scares me.”

Everyone I observed began crossing University once Ruddell traffic got a green light and University traffic had a red light. I measured how much time people had to walk across University using this method. 

Depending on how many cars were waiting on Ruddell, the time between Ruddell traffic getting a green light and University traffic getting a green light was either 15 seconds or roughly 43 seconds.

Some of the people I observed left the crosswalk to seek refuge on the median at the halfway point. If someone cannot complete the crossing before cross-traffic gets a green light, a median is a safer place to wait than the crosswalk.

During my 20-minute wait for the Walk signal, I saw the short 15-second cycle more than the 43-second cycle. The average person is unlikely to know which cycle length they’re going to get or how long they’d have to wait for the right combination of Ruddell traffic to trigger the longer cycle.

Assuming 63 year-old Carter had the walking speed of an average young adult with cerebral palsy, 2.9 ft/s, he would have traveled about 43.5 feet in the 15 seconds before University traffic got a green light. This would place him in the eastbound lanes of University when that traffic got the go-ahead. 

One witness said they were waiting at the red light in the eastbound lanes of University Drive and had to wait when they got a green light because Carter was still crossing the eastbound lanes.

According to a resident of an apartment home on Ruddell Street, Kevin Cline, the pedestrian button had been broken for at least six months. “It’s sad what happened,” said Cline, “and even more sad that it’s been broken for so long. It’s a busy four-way, and I’m surprised no one was hit sooner.”

When I returned home, I called the non-emergency line for Denton Police to notify them of the broken pedestrian button where someone had been killed just days before. According to the person I spoke to, crews only address issues with traffic lights Monday through Friday.

Because there was no apparent way to report the dangerous issue in a more urgent manner, I reported the broken pedestrian button through Engage Denton, a system where the public can report issues to the City.

By the end of Monday, December 30, city staff had repaired the broken pedestrian button. 

Since then, a nearby resident on the north side of University Drive reported to me that a street lamp was also broken at the same intersection on the northwest corner. He indicated he would report the broken street lamp through Engage Denton, but this issue is not yet resolved as of this writing.

A driver with a green light does not expect someone to still be crossing. Even if they are traveling at the 45 mph speed limit, the cone of visibility is small at that speed, making it harder to detect a person in the crosswalk. Visibility is further hindered after nightfall–especially when street lamps are broken or non-existent. As a result, even a law-abiding driver could still easily miss, fail to avoid, slam into, and kill a person who was physically unable to walk cross all seven lanes of traffic within the time he was given.

A Safer Transportation System

Every year, more than 40,000 people are killed in traffic crashes in the United States. The U.S. has a notably higher traffic fatality rate than other high-income countries. Between 2015 and 2019, most peer countries reduced their fatality rate while the U.S. rate remained stubbornly high at 11 deaths per 100,000 population.

Data from the U.S. National Safety Council show the U.S. traffic fatality rate well above peer countries.

Since 2019, the traffic fatality rate has grown from 11 per 100,000 people in 2019 to 13.8 per 100,000 people in 2022, according to the National Safety Council. In Texas, the traffic fatality rate was 14.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 2022, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Recognizing common characteristics of fatal crashes, transportation departments are beginning to adopt a Safe Systems Approach that aims to address the host of factors contributing to the high rate of traffic fatalities in the United States. This approach recognizes that humans make mistakes, human bodies can only tolerate a certain impact, safety should be proactive, and redundancy is crucial to a safe system.

The objective of the Safe Systems Approach is a mix of avoiding collisions in the first place and reducing their severity when they inevitably occur. This is accomplished through safer roads, safer speeds, safer vehicles, safer people, and improved post-crash care. 

Since 2019, the City of Denton has been developing a Vision Zero Action Plan which would implement a data-driven Safe Systems Approach to eliminate deaths and serious injuries from traffic crashes in Denton. Phase 1 of planning was completed in 2022. Phase 2 is anticipated to begin in 2025.

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Suzi Rumohr
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